The 11,000 job cuts in November were not enough to make the expected savings. Meta will therefore resort to 10,000 additional layoffs, announced Tuesday the CEO of the group, Mark Zuckerberg. In addition, the parent company of the social networks Facebook and Instagram will remove from its organization chart 5,000 positions currently unoccupied and for which there will be no recruitment, said the leader in a statement. The list of affected positions will be unveiled at the end of April and the restructuring will be carried out by the end of the year.

At the end of these two waves, the giant of Menlo Park (California) will have cut its workforce by 24%, a sudden change of gear for a group that had never launched a social plan in nearly 20 years of existence. For Mark Zuckerberg, the decision is justified by the need to "make [Meta] a better technology company" and "to improve our financial performance in a challenging environment, so that we can achieve our long-term vision."

The co-founder of Facebook, who embodies the social network, took up the term used during the presentation of annual results in early February, namely that 2023 must be "the year of efficiency" for Meta.

Slowdown in online advertising

In addition to job cuts, the company will slow the pace of hiring, added Mark Zuckerberg, who also plans to "cancel non-priority projects". The group had already announced the hiring freeze until the end of March 2023.

After posting insolent growth since its creation, Facebook, which became Meta at the end of 2021, has been suffering, since last year, from the slowdown in online advertising. The movement is accentuated by the modification of the operating system of the iPhone (iOS), which no longer allows the platform to collect as much data as before on its users.

In addition, Facebook and Instagram are subject to increasing competition, especially from the video platform TikTok, which is cutting back on its market share. In addition, Meta suffers, like the entire technology industry, from rising interest rates, which penalizes a sector that is very cash-hungry to finance its development. In 2022, Meta's revenue contracted 1% to $116.6 billion.

  • Meta
  • Tech
  • Facebook
  • Mark zuckerberg
  • Instagram
  • Abolition of posts